Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 21 March 2024
187. Deputy Richard Bruton asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform the number of people who now have a public service or State body pension; and his projection for this number for 2030 and for 2040. [13521/24]
View answerI and my Department are responsible for the civil service pension schemes, which cover members of established and unestablished civil service and State industrial schemes.
The authorities responsible for the administration of the large number of pension schemes operating in the various sectors of the public service are, in general, the relevant employers and Ministers in those sectors.
It would be a matter for those sectoral authorities, including relevant Ministers, to supply such information as may be available in respect of the number of people in receipt of a pension from those individual pension schemes.
There were 30,299 civil service pensions in payment in respect of the Superannuation and Retired Allowance (Vote 12), as per the latest audited and published Appropriation Account at year-end 2022.
My officials estimate that the number of civil service pensions will increase by c.2-3% p.a. over the next two decades.
It should be noted that a significant number of reforms have been implemented over time to improve the sustainability of public service pensions, namely:
• Integration of public service occupational pensions with the State Pension Contributory in 1995;
• Increase in the normal retirement age to 65 in 2004;
• Introduction of the Single Public Service Pension Scheme for all new entrant public servants from January 2013;
• Increase in the maximum retirement age to 70 for pre-2004 public servants in 2019; and
The conversion of the Pension Related Deduction (PRD) to a permanent Additional Superannuation Contribution (ASC), increasing employee contributions from €1.0bn to €1.7bn in 2022.
